Stainsby

Stainsby is an abandoned medieval village in North Yorkshire, just east of the A19 near Middlesbrough. Only low mounds remain above ground, but the site is protected as a scheduled monument. Three nearby farms still carry the name: Stainsby Grange, Stainsby Hall and Stainsby Hill. A small stream called Stainsby Beck marks part of the boundary between Stockton-on-Tees and Middlesbrough. Acklam Grange School once bore the village’s name before it was renamed. The village appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as three carucates of land. Walter de Stainsby held it from 1284 to 1303, after which it passed with Picton manor until about 1800, when the Earl of Harewood became lord. Tax records from 1302 list nine inhabitants, yet the village vanished without clear cause. By 1757 only Stainsby Grange Farm remained on maps. During the Second World War a pillbox was built on the site to defend Thornaby Aerodrome, and it is included in the monument’s protection. Earthworks south and south-east of the farm show the remains of a toft village. Two rows of large enclosures, each about fifty metres long and thirty-five metres wide, were separated by shallow ditches. A central trackway linked the rows, with a hollow lane to the west and a circular depression that was probably a pond. Beyond the village lie ridge-and-furrow marks from medieval ploughing, traces of the open-field system once worked by the villagers.